His full name is Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn Muhammad ibn ˘Alī
ibn Yūsuf al-˘Umarī al-Dimashqī. His nickname [laqab] is Shams alDīn, and he
had two patronyms [kunyatān] Abū al-Khayr and Abū Muhammad; the first is more
generally used.
He is commonly known as Ibn al-Jazarī. The ascription
‘jazarī’ originates from the Arabic word ‘jazīrah,’ which means ‘a peninsula.’
Most experts are of the view that it belongs to Jazaria Ibn ˘Umar,
a town in Turkistan.
The eponymous Ibn ˘Umar is ˘Abd Allāh ibn ˘Umar, a man from
Mosul in Iraq. Some have recommended that it signifies Jazīrah ibn al-Khattāb
al-Ta˘labī, a port city in Armenia.
The father of Ibn al-Jazarī – a merchant by trade – spent
forty years wish for a child but to no avail. At the well of Zamzam, while
performing Hajj, he supplicated that Allah grants him a son. His prayer was
answered and in the year 751 AH on a Saturday night, the 25th of the month of
Ramadān, just after the finish of the night Tarāwīh salāh-prayers, Ibn
al-Jazarī was born.
Ibn al-Jazarī's father, himself a devout Muslim, respected
the Islāmic sciences and had a particular inclination to the study of the
Qur`ān. He, therefore, gave his son to his personal Sheikh, the renowned Hasan
al-Sarūjī, at a tender age to begin his education in the Qur`ānic sciences. In
this way, father and son are listed in the annals of history as contemporaries,
having been students of the same master.
Ibn al-Jazarī successfully memorized the entire Qur`ān at
the early age of 13, and a year later, in 765 AH, was picked to lead the
community in salāh. He soon followed this singular feat with an initiation into
the study of the different qirā'āt [Qur`ānic readings] at the hands of the
master reciters [qurrā'] of the Levant.
6 Notables amongst his many teachers from the Levant include
Ibn al-Sallār, Ahmad al-Tahhān, and Ahmad ibn Rajab. The study and rendering of
the whole seven readings [sab˘ah qirā'āt] were conducted under the guardianship
of such masters as Ibrāhīm al-Hamawī and Abū al-Ma˘ālī ibn al-Labbān which he
completed in the year 768 AH.
In the same year, he traveled to Hijāz [now part of Saudi
Arabia] for Hajj where he repeatedly studied the seven readings poem in Arabic, this time as directed
in al-Kāfī of Ibn al-Shurayh and al-Taysīr of Abū ˘Amr al- Dānī under the Imām
of Medina, Muhammad ibn ˘Abd Allāh.
On his return to Damascus, he made arrangements to study in
Spain by Sheikh Muhammad ibn Yūsuf al-Andalūsī but was discouraged by his
father. Instead, in 769 AH, he traveled to Egypt where under the guardianship
of Ibn al-Sā`igh and Ibn al-Baghdādī, he learned to combine the seven
alternative readings as indicated in al-˘Unwān, al-Taysīr and alShātibiyyah. He
also, read the twelve passages [qirā'āt] to Abū Bakr ibn al-Jundī according to
many alternative turuq tuhfat al atfal In the course of his
reading to Ibn al-Jundī, he reached the Qurānic verse in Sūrah Nahl.
He then left for Egypt, where he met his son, whom he had
not seen for 20 years. The following hajj season noticed him return to Makkah
and then to Yemen via sea. The Yemenites by then already possessed copies of
his al-Hisn al-Hasīn, which they had commenced studying. He remained with them
until the next hajj; after that, he journeyed to Egypt, where he gave some
months. In 829 AH, the desire to continue his propagation and teaching took him
back to Damascus and then on to Shīrāz.
This was to be his last journey, and he passed away in 833
AH on the 5th of Rabī˘ al-Awwal, a Friday. His funeral procession attracted a
great multitude who vied to have the honor to carry his bier. His body was laid
to rest in the school, which he had specially built in Shīrāz.
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